Tag: Defensive Gun Use

By Joshua Gant, Opslens contributer, and LEO!

“The concept that you can stop crime by increasing gun legislation is so off base that it is dangerous to the safety and security of each and every citizen of the United States.”

As I sit back and watch headline after headline tick across my screen, it’s disgusting to me to witness the assault being waged on our right to keep and bear arms. For the people who seem to have forgotten, those rights are guaranteed by a document that liberals like to side step from time to time called the Constitution of the United States.

School shootings have been brought to the forefront by all of their media coverage, and for good reason, the victims are children. Sadly, the school location does not matter, it can happen anywhere. So why do the bad guys pick schools? In interviews with many of the school shooters, it was found that they knew they had a lot of people in a confined area and that no one would be armed. In other words, a school is an easy and target rich environment where they were not likely to encounter armed resistance.

Some of the school districts and law enforcement agencies across the country have started a program, putting a uniformed police officer in schools. They are called ‘school resource officers.’ This program has a lot of great benefits to it. Kids get to know that police are not the bad guys, and they get to interact with and sometimes befriend the officers. Adding an armed police officer to the school has the added benefit of placing someone at the location at all times in case a law enforcement response is needed. But the problem with this program is of course like anything else in law enforcement, money. It costs money to place these officers in every school. Salaries, benefits and other fringe items can add up. Even with the comparably low pay most officers get, it is still more than the school board or police departments want to spend. Bottom line: It all boils down to the money. The schools where the program has been instituted have been exceptionally successful, with kids, parents and the officers giving it high praise.

Any time there is a discussion about gun laws, concealed carry versus open carry, and the various other issues revolving around the possession of firearms, someone will always bring up the issue that law enforcement will be confused and possibly shoot a licensed concealed carry or open carry firearms holder if involved in a mass shooting, Lone Wolf, or terrorist attack. Some of the anti-gun crowd like to use the “police won’t know who the bad guy is” argument or the “good guys with guns don’t stop bad guys with guns” line against arguments for less gun control.

If you are lucky enough to live in a state that allows concealed carry without a license — or open carry, for that matter — count yourself fortunate. If you live in a state that requires a license to exercise your Second Amendment rights, you fall within the majority of the nation. Either way if you carry a firearm and choose to do so (and what logical, realist, thinking adult wouldn’t) not many firearms classes cover what to do if you are caught up in some kind of a mass shooting or active shooter situation. So let’s try and cover a few options that you can pick from, gleaned from a few decades of training in firearms and law enforcement.

Recently, I was contacted by my local sheriff’s office and asked to help them out by developing training material for their deputies. This material would specifically provide legal guidelines for a police officer to follow in the state of Florida if someone he or she encountered had a concealed firearms license and was carrying a firearm, or had a firearm legally in their vehicle. Since I am a full-time law enforcement trainer in the state of Florida, and a staunch supporter of the second amendment, I gladly agreed to help.

I sat down and wrote out a training curriculum for the deputies that included Florida’s current state laws on firearms possession. I also used research from case laws regarding the rules and regulations of confiscations by police of citizens, including the notion of temporarily taking your firearm from you at a traffic stop. When all was said and done, the curriculum was well-received by the deputies and the sheriff’s office, and continues to be used not only by them, but by several other departments, and it is being considered for inclusion in the basic law enforcement training curriculum for the state of Florida.

But in doing this, it also brought to mind the other side of the coin: what should a citizen do if stopped by the police while carrying a firearm legally in the vehicle, or with a concealed firearms license and a firearm on them while driving?

When did it stop being cool or hip or whatever word you want to use in our society to be self-reliant and able to take care of yourself and your family? When did our ability to defend ourselves and defend those that we love become something that was considered wrong, or evil?

How in the world did we raise so many people in these United States to be afraid to defend themselves, even to the point of not fighting back when they know there is no other recourse but to die groveling in front of some lunatic or a madman with a gun?

I had a discussion, just the other day, with someone in an internet group who asked what they could have in their home other than a gun to defend their home and their family from an intruder. The conversation went on and I was informed that the person asking the question was doing so for a family member who was “very liberal” and scared of firearms. I thought to myself, how did this person who is afraid of firearms and “does not want to hurt the intruder” make it to this point? What possibly could have caused them to be this way?

The recent shooting of a suspect, who was attacking a Florida Deputy, occurred when a law abiding, lawfully carrying, outstanding citizen shot and killed the attacker, quite possibly saving the deputy’s life. While no one wants to have to shoot someone, that is what happened.

The difference between this shooting and most self-defense shootings is the fact that it was witnessed (to some even directed by) the deputy. There is no question as to the justifiability of this shooting. By Florida law it’s a clear-cut case of self-defense and defense of another. Florida law permits you to not only defend yourself but also others if they are being attacked and you think they may be killed or suffer great bodily harm. (F.S.S. 776.012 Use or threatened use of force in defense of person.)

That said, there is no doubt that it was a lawful shooting. It was surprising when I saw another article which stated a local gun shop had to provide the citizen with another firearm to carry because his was taken into custody by the police. This was the point where I started to think as a cop. I am on the scene of a shooting that I know for a fact is not a crime because no criminal act was committed by the citizen. So I am looking at this particular case and wondered to myself, “What justification would I have to take the shooter’s firearm into evidence if I was there at the scene?”

It happened again! Another attack on a college campus. This time it was Ohio State University, and it was not a gun being used, but a knife that wounded 11 people. The suspect (I will not dignify or promote the terrorists name) is dead of a gunshot wound from a campus police officer who just happened to be in the area at the time of the attack. What in the world are we doing America? Why can we not stop these attacks on our college campuses and other places where we gather in large numbers? Why can’t we just pass a law? Maybe more gun control laws would help. Take away all the guns and the attacks would stop right? If guns were harder to get, then these attacks would stop right? I forgot, this one was with a knife and it was a gun that saved more people from being injured or killed. Yes, I know that it was a police officer that shot and killed the suspect, but what if that officer had not been in the area at the time of the incident? What if it had taken them the normal 3-5 minutes to respond like it does everywhere in the country (and that is being kind and conservative in response times, they are much longer in many places).

What can we do to lessen the impact or to stop these kinds of terrorist attacks when they happen? Let’s look at this realistically and not emotionally like the large majority of the anti-gun crowd. Put away your fear and your hate for all things gun-related for just a few minutes as you read this. Since this was a knife attack and had nothing to do with guns, with the exception that a gun, in fact, saved everyone’s lives, consider the facts that gun laws would have done nothing to change the outcome of this. Or could they have?